


give me a chance, anyhow

by beamkatanachronicles



Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series, immediately post-The Duel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:20:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21783610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beamkatanachronicles/pseuds/beamkatanachronicles
Summary: He looks sixteen,maybe,if Charles is generous. The boy-- the new guitarist, he assumes-- is huddled behind the dining table: mousy, slight and pale, his dirty brown hair unkempt and in desperate need of a cut. Or a brush, at the very least.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 49





	give me a chance, anyhow

They call their shared apartment “Mordhaus”. 

Long ago, Charles had shown up on their doorstep pressed, ironed, and neat; stepping inside, he’d met with empty egg cartons taped to the walls, a busted radiator, a refrigerator that leaked some unidentifiable sludge. Half a year later, he's finally accustomed to the place, although he still won’t dress down for a visit. He’s got no room to judge. No matter how much they claim to _like_ it, the necessity of it is clear. Not even a suit like him could be that cold-blooded. It’s partially his fault, after all. By some miracle he’d argued for Dethklok’s greater creative freedom in the record deal, at the expense of a sizable chunk of the advance-- thank god he’d won the band, much less the label, over on that one. Half the pittance they’d kept had gone to studio time and much-needed equipment upgrades. 

And that was all _before_ they’d lost a guitarist.

This afternoon, stepping around broken beer bottles to ascend the stairs, Charles contemplates a restraining order. Magnus had been... _difficult_. The type to retaliate. Eventually. It’d be well worth the trouble to get into it, he reasons, for everyone’s sake; for now, however, signing the new guitarist is his first priority. He raps his knuckles on their front door. While he waits, the silence punctuated by stumbling footsteps, he adjusts his tie, brushes a speck of lint off the lapel of his coat.

“Oh, heyyy-- aw, shit!” The door, still chained up, catches with a straining _thump_ . Charles blinks. Pickles grins crookedly out at him through the visible sliver of roach apartment. “Dude, hang on.” He shuts the door again, fumbling loudly with the chain lock, and soon enough Dethklok’s drummer is ushering him inside with a mock-flourish. “C’mon in, our _casa es su casa_.” 

“I feel, ah, very welcomed.”

Pickles, grabbing a half-empty bottle up off the floor, squints up at him. “You’re here for the new guy, right? At least try to look excited.” He presses the beer into Charles’ chest. “You’re gonna hurt the poor kid’s feelings.” 

Charles raises an eyebrow and pushes the bottle away gently. “We have a new band member. I am excited.”

“Well, you coulda fooled m--”

Out of sight and all at once, the rest of the band picks up. Noisily.

“Ams that--” “Thought he’d never fuckin’ get here!” “--Offdensen?! Hey, Charles, fucking _finally_ \--”

“Oop-- heh, sounds like they heard us.” Pickles shrugs and takes a swig. “I’ll let ya handle ‘em in there.”

“Pickles, why am I ‘handling’ them?”

But Pickles, draining the last of the beer, is already dropping himself into the tattered armchair in the corner of the living room. It’s not worth it when he can proceed directly towards the matter at hand. Charles turns away and heads into the kitchen; glancing over on the way there, he notices that they’ve started scrubbing the paint off the far wall-- the word “REVENGE” faded and smeared, still an unsightly red stain, but much fainter than before. 

Everything makes sense once he rounds the corner. 

He looks sixteen, _maybe_ , if Charles is generous. The boy-- the new guitarist, he assumes-- is huddled behind the dining table: mousy, slight and pale, his dirty brown hair unkempt and in desperate need of a cut. Or a brush, at the very least. At a glance, Charles can see his shirt’s ill-fitting and growing tattered. Without looking down, he already knows that his shoes are wearing out, too. 

“Ah,” he breathes.

Nathan, Skwisgaar, and a growing assortment of half-eaten chip bags and empty instant ramen cups flank him on either side. The kid’s still working on one of those cup noodles, actually: he shovels noodles into his mouth with a plastic fork like he’ll never eat again for the rest of his life. For a long few seconds, Charles just… lets him. It’s too surreal a sight for him to even begin to interrupt-- and the band (sans Pickles), hovering around the kid, stares back as if daring him to say something first. Then he gets over it. Pointedly, he clears his throat. The moment the boy looks up and spots a new face, he stops so abruptly, watery blue eyes wide and cheeks cartoonishly full, that Charles worries he might choke. 

“Jesus Christ,” Murderface, standing behind the group, whines. He leans over a visibly put-off Skwisgaar in an effort to swipe some chips. “What do we gotta do to get you here faster next time, huh? Tell you we’re friggin’ dying?”

“God, shut up, Murderface.” Nathan shoves a bag of Doritos into his hand to silence him. “‘Least he’s here now.” 

“This--” Skwisgaar says, straightening up proudly in his chair, “ams Toki.”

“Toki Wartooth,” Nathan continues. His eyes narrow, darting from Toki (chewing frantically), to Charles, to Toki (hurriedly wiping his mouth) again. 

“He ams our new rhythms guitarists.”

“Yeah, this is him. Hey, Toki, this is our manager.” Nathan nudges the kid in the side with his elbow. “Uh, Toki, get... up, or something, I guess.”

He barely needs it: he nearly falls over himself getting to his feet. “Y-yeah, my names is Toki!” Toki, looking frantic and thrilled all at the same time, puffs out his chest. “I mades it through my auditions and everythings!” 

Charles opens his mouth. And closes it. He presses his lips into a tight line, eyebrows knitting together, and at last reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Nathan, can I talk to you? Outside?”

\---

“ _And why not?_ ”

“Nathan, we’ve talked about this.”

“Yeah, and I don’t give a shit! This is _our_ band, and if we picked our guy, we’re fuckin’ sticking to it!” 

Nathan-- taller and broader by far-- steps just a little too close. Charles, craning his neck to meet the man’s eyes, doesn’t budge a fraction of an inch. “How old is he?”

“Uh--” He falters.

“He’s almost certainly a runaway.”

“Eight-- I dunno, eighteen, I guess?” There’s a growing commotion inside Mordhaus: four overlapping voices bicker loudly through the walls, and Nathan squeezes his eyes shut, trying to split his attention between the noise and convincingly lying through his teeth. “C’mon, what does it fuckin’ matter--”

“Fuck this! I’m goin’ outside!” Murderface bursts through the door; it wobbles dangerously at the hinges as he stomps over, jabbing a finger into Charles’ chest. “Why d’you gotta be such a goddamn Nazi all the time, huh?!” 

“Aaaand heeeere we go,” groans Pickles, leaning against the doorway. “What’d I tell ya? I _knew_ was gonna be a dick about it!”

“Yeah, Offdensen,” Nathan echoes, “you’re being a fucking _dick_ right now!” 

“Fuckin’ cockbreath!”

“You know how long it took us to get Skwisgaar to like somebody? Freakin’ hours! I’m not doin’ that shit again!” 

“ _And_ he’s good! Real good!”

“Well,” Murderface shrugs. “I mean, he’s pretty good, but--”

“Dude, we’re tryin’ to convince him, shut up!”

“Guys--” They’re all talking at the same time again. God, can Charles feel the migraine coming on. “Guys. Please.”

“Oh, ams this business now? Makings decisions, excludings half the bands?” Skwisgaar, with a sneer, finally joins the conversation with an anxious Toki close at his heels. “Way to stifles my creatives controls, when it ams me ands Toki with the most’ses concerned in the guitars parts? _Again_.” He mutters darkly about America-something in Swedish back at the boy; Toki forces an uncomfortable laugh, then shoots a pleading look Charles’ way.

“No, Skwisgaar. This was supposed to be a conversation between myself and Nathan alone.” 

“If you can tell me,” growls Nathan, “you can tell all of Dethklok.”

Charles stares helplessly back at the five of them. The five of them, simmering in a shared, silent fury, meet his eyes with an unrelenting gaze. He’s outnumbered. Hopelessly so. He closes his eyes, breathes in, and exhales very, very slowly: evidently, he has no other choice but to give their pick a chance. But before he can speak, he’s interrupted.

“One show.” Emboldened, Toki steps out from behind their lead guitarist. “Please-- gives me one chance, just one gigs! If it don’t works out, then…”

“Then what?” The rest of the band is dead silent. Toki’s still staring back at him with his fists balled up tight at his sides; Pickles has got a hand locked tight on the kid’s shoulder, glaring up at their manager. Charles tries to be firm, he really does-- but the tone just won’t take to his voice. “We ship you back home?” A beat. “Where _is_ home, exactly?”

The band glances skeptically around at each other. Toki hesitates. “Lillehammer.”

“...So Norway, then. Fine. If your first gig doesn’t take, you fly straight home.”

“So...” Skwisgaar, taken aback, blinks. “So, does that means…”

“Uh, Charles,” Nathan starts, “are we gonna be able to pay for a fl--” 

“It’ll get taken care of,” Charles answers quickly. He’ll figure the numbers out later if it comes to it. Hopefully, he won’t have to. “Mr. Wartooth?”

“Yeah?”

It feels like they’re all holding their breath. Toki, knuckles turning a pale white, looks a little like he’s about to pass out.

“You’d better break a leg at that first gig.” 

“Oh, shit--” “All right, kid!” “Wo-wowee--” 

Even Charles can’t help but smile as they talk excitedly over him, take turns shaking the kid by the shoulders. “Yes, all right, all right. By the way, ah, we haven’t worked out health insurance yet, so if you could get some, I don’t know, some more _produce_ instead of booze in the old fridge...” 

None of them are listening. Charles never really expects them to, anymore. 

\---

The appetizers are drenched in oil and they get to his table almost cold. Charles can tell before the waitress sets the glass down that they’ve watered the beer down, too. But a deal is a deal, and a gig is still a gig, even in a cheap, run-down bar like this. Hell, for Dethklok, it’s actually one of the nicer spots they’ve played.

As the band sets up their gear on the bar’s tiny stage, he meets Toki’s eyes, even from where he’s sitting at the very back of the venue. His expression softens, and he lifts his glass. Toki grins ear to ear. A moment later, Skwisgaar’s tugging him away to go over some line or another last minute. Charles watches the five mill about for another minute before he takes the first sip of his beer. As it turns out, it isn’t watered down in the least. 

“Huh,” he mutters to himself, “not bad.”

Up front, microphone feedback squeals and hums-- “ _Mic check, mic check!”_ snarls Nathan. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re motherfucking _Dethklok!"  
_

He relaxes as Pickles bangs out the opening drum beats. Charles smiles, taking his next swig.

**Author's Note:**

> charles celebrates the end of toki's probationary period by buying them all groceries, because they DEFINITELY ignored him when he told them to buy produce. :') thanks for reading!


End file.
